Travel & Leisure

In Focus: James Deakin On The Little Things You Can Do To Help Reduce Traffic-Induced Stress

Despite waking up even before the sun rises, we'd still reach our destination, alas, late. It's a fact every Metro Manila resident knows too well, opening one's eyes to a kind of traffic situation that has marked us with the third worst of which in the world. Traffic then remains a hot topic in the local government, a fire fueled by multia-warded motoring journo James Deakin with his reco of decentralization. "You cannot possibly have one capital where everything happens. You have got to decentralize,” he told ABS-CBN Lifestyle on the set of iFlix show Hot Ones. “We are growing at a rate where we just cannot match with infrastructure, especially when you’re concentrated in just one city.”

Deakin's plan might come off as something taken from a macro approach, as it involves major urban planning decisions. In the meantime, for the rest of us, he could only suggest the following to abide by!

Measure your trips. “Plan well in advance. The traffic is so bad and nobody really wants to take unnecessary trips,” the TV host said, adding that doing so can somehow help you reach your destination the quickest.

Commute more. You may be tired of train breakdowns, limited spaces in buses and jeepneys, but for Deakin, using the public transport is still a good way to ease traffic congestion. “In Tokyo and in all these other developed countries, the rich take it not because they’re trying to prove a point. It’s just simply because it’s more efficient and it saves time,” he continued. “As Bogota mayor Enrique Peñalosa once said, which still holds true, a rich country is not where the poor people drive cars but where the rich take public transport.”

Share a ride with others. Not only can carpooling help lessen the number of cars on the road, the columnist stresses, it could also save you money!

Don’t let it get to you personally. “Everyone’s in a rush, everyone’s in the same boat as you. We’re all trying to move and we’re all trying to get where we’re going so just keep a cool head out there," he declared.